This Cyborg Alleges That McDonald's Employees Assaulted Him For Wearing Digital Glasses

Earlier this month, human cyborg and University of Toronto
Professor Steve Mann, claims he was brutalized and kicked out of
a Paris McDonald’s after employees objected to his headset and
its ability to record photos and videos of his experiences.

“I’m not sure why the perpetrators attacked, but 'Perp. 1'
[Mann's name for one of his assailants] did mention about cameras
not being allowed,” he told us in an exclusive email interview.
Mann was unavailable for a phone call because his iPhone was also damaged in the alleged
attack.

Though augmented reality headsets like Google’s Project Glass
have just started making headlines this year, Mann has been
wearing his own home-brewed “EyeTap Digital Glass” computers
every day since the early 1980s.

The current generation EyeTap, which runs on customized WearComp
OS, captures images at 120 frames per second in 1080 x 1920-pixel
resolution, but according to Mann, these images aren’t stored
permanently.

“It merely delays rather than records, but when damaged
(computer) the leftovers were recovered,” he said. “In this sense
Perp 1 [the person who allegedly assaulted Mann] was the person
who took all the pictures in the last hour or so, by causing the
computer to be broken.”

Mann told us that on July 1st he, his wife, and their two
children were in line to purchase food at the Paris McDonald’s
when an employee approached and informed them that cameras were
not allowed in the establishment. After Mann presented the
employee with a doctor’s note he carries with him that states he
needs to wear his headgear, the employee let him through and a
cashier took his order.

According to Mann, after he and his family had received their
food and taken a seat by the entrance, another McDonald’s
employee, whom Mann refers to as Perpetrator 1, approached and
angrily tried to pull the EyeTap, which is permanently attached
and cannot be removed without tools, off of his head.

“Perp. 1 reached his left hand out and pressed against the frame
of my eyeglass, and swung his left hand around a few times
pushing and pulling at it,” he told us.

Mann then tried to calm Perpetrator 1 and showed him his doctor’s
note, which the employee showed to two coworkers, whom Mann
nicknames Perpetrators 2 and 3. After Perpetrator 2 crumpled up
his doctor’s note and Perpetrator 1 tore up some other
documentation he provided, Perpetrator 1 then allegedly
pushed him out the door and onto the street, damaging his gear.

“My Glass started acting a little erratic but I could still see
to some degree, but with crosshatches and kind of a freeze-frame
like motion as the Eye Glass stopped and started intermittently,”
Mann said. The alleged assault apparently loosened a ribbon cable
within the device, causing the eye piece to malfunction and flood
Mann’s eye with laser light.

However, the device was still functioning until Mann had an
embarrassing bodily reaction upon hitting the street, which
caused his circuits to short out.

“The actual cause of the final stoppage (which happened shortly
after he pushed me out the door) is a bit embarrassing as what
happened also is that I had had to really use the toilet, at the
time, and it was that I’d been going toward using the toilet but
got attacked, so as a result, later, it turned out that my pants
became the toilet,” he said.

“The cargo pants I wear have large number of pockets most of the
way down both legs, so my iPhone and the processing boards,
motherboard of miniature PC, control board of Glass, etc., went
dead shortly afterwards, and that’s when the Glass went totally
dark. My iPhone and some of the other pieces still don’t work.”

Mann said that, after picking himself up and dusting himself off,
he sought out Police in the Champs-Elysees area, but none of the
many cops he approached were interested in taking a report or
investigating.

“Some of the parts of me started shutting down at different times
afterwards,” Mann told us in an exclusive email interview. “I’m
still online now but a lot is not working.”

“After first trying with the Police (no luck) and then the
Consulate/Embassies (no luck), and then the legal experts and
human rights commissioners (no luck), some of whom suggested “the
court of public opinion,” I finally brought this matter to the
public’s attention, but only after exhausting all other
possibilities,” he said.

A representative from McDonald’s told us that the company is
still investigating the incident.

“We strive to provide a welcoming and enjoyable experience for
our customers when they visit our restaurants,” the company told
us in a statement. “We take the claims and feedback of our
customers very seriously. We are in the process of gathering
information about this situation and we ask for patience until
all of the facts are known.”

For his part, Mann said he is not seeking punitive damages, just
enough money to fix his EyeTap Glass and perhaps a commitment
from McDonald’s to support vision research as his glasses are
also designed to eventually help people with vision and memory
problems.

No matter how this ends, Mann’s story raises serious questions
about technology and privacy. As we carry cameras with us
everywhere we go, the question of where and when we can capture
our experiences looms large. Google’s upcoming Project Glass will
certainly be swept up in the same type of controversy as
augmented reality eyewear proliferates.

In a paper on wearable computing, Mann describes wearable devices
and recording as similar to human memory and says that public
establishments like businesses should not discriminate against
people whose memories are captured by computer devices. He sees a
future in which everyone from memory-impaired Alzheimer’s
patients to healthy adults uses wearable tech as an extended
memory.

“The "Silicon Brain" of the Mindmesh thus asks the question "is
remembering recording?" As more people embrace prosthetic minds,
this distinction will disappear. Businesses and other
organizations have a legal obligation not to discriminate, and
will therefore not be able to prevent individuals from seeing and
remembering, whether by natural biological or computational
means,” he
writes on Interaction-Design.org.